Epis­ode Num­ber: 7×17

Writ­ten by: Jon Crew, based on a story by Dayton Ward

Dir­ec­ted by: Jon Crew

Trans­mis­sion: 5^th Septem­ber 2026

Guest Stars:

• Lieu­ten­ant T’rhyn: Time trav­el­ler from the 23^rd cen­tury, now serving as a Pro­ject Dia­mond Hedge advisor.
• Lieu­ten­ant Com­mand­er X’ll’t’k: Xindi insect­oid serving as sci­ence officer in Zeph­t’s absence.

After two days, we are still unable to return to Pi-Latka. Long range sensors indic­ate that the Kin­shaya ves­sels are still present, and we know they are angry.

While the ship’s sci­ence depart­ment is excited to study the broad­casts of the lob­ster civil­isa­tion with­in the Ember Cluster, we can­not afford to waste time: the Iconi­an Oracle’s return is now 14 days away, and we still don’t know where it will appear.

Cap­tain’s Log: Stard­ate, 52559.2

Plot: An under­cov­er mis­sion back to recon­noitre Pi-Latka runs into a major obstacle.

The ‘A’ Plot: Lex­ing­ton has been lurk­ing at the edge of the Ember Cluster for two days, in the hope that the Kin­shaya will leave Pi-Latka, but there is no sign of this hap­pen­ing. The com­modore is con­cerned: the clock is tick­ing towards the return of the Iconi­an Oracle con­tain­ing Lt Cdr Zepht, and they are no closer to know­ing where the arrival will take place.

Organ­ising a meet­ing to ask his officers for options, Kon­in estab­lishes his priorities:

• Res­cue Zepht
• Secure the Oracle
• Either avoid or defeat Ash’Tamalia
• Either avoid or fend off the Kinshaya 
  • He notes that while they pose a threat, it is unclear how dan­ger­ous they actu­ally are
• Com­mu­nic­ate with the “entity” resid­ing in the system.

Raynor sug­gests that a run­about would be a lot less likely to be detec­ted by the Kin­shaya, and notes that the Ouse has a cloak­ing device, assum­ing they can get it to work.

Quinn reports that while the Trave is in full work­ing order, it is very vul­ner­able com­pared to an uncloaked ves­sel. The Ouse has the cloak­ing device, but has been stripped for parts to fix dam­age sus­tained by the Trave dur­ing the res­cue of Recana-el. It would take about 4 days to reverse that pro­cess, but giv­en that the cloak­ing device is con­tained in a remov­able mod­ule, it should be pos­sible to swap it to the Trave. He has no idea how long it would take to gain access to the device, and to inter­face it to the Trave’s sys­tems.

Approach­ing the prob­lem from a dif­fer­ent angle, Raynor sug­gests that they may be able to use probes to sim­u­late oth­er ships to dis­tract the Kin­shaya commanders.

T’rhyn believes the Oracle will remain at Pi-Latka for only a short peri­od, mov­ing on to a new time/space loc­a­tion if this one does not meet its require­ments. There­fore, time is of the essence. Raynor asks what the cri­ter­ia would be, but she does not have that inform­a­tion. She spec­u­lates that it may be scan­ning for Tilikaal or Iconi­an sig­nals. Azon­an reminds them that the Tilikaal arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence they encountered before was com­mu­nic­at­ing with oth­ers using a ded­ic­ated sub­space data net­work, but that the chan­nels used are still unknown. Raynor sug­gests that if they can work this out, they may be able to set up a fake sig­nal to keep the Oracle in this time.

Kon­in comes to a decision, decid­ing that he would prefer to use the Trave, trans­fer­ring the cloak­ing device. He also notes that it may be pos­sible to fix their rela­tion­ship with the Kin­shaya by mak­ing appro­pri­ate resti­tu­tion, although Azon­an com­ments that if they require a sac­ri­fice or exe­cu­tion, that will not be happening.

The crew gets to work. Quinn and the shuttle deck crew trans­fer the cloak­ing mod­ule to the Trave, and over the next two days, Raynor and Azon­an work to bypass its secur­ity sys­tems. Once they are suc­cess­ful, Azon­an and Selvek work togeth­er to cre­ate an inter­face to con­trol the cloak­ing device.

Kon­in takes a day out to deal with the with­draw­al symp­toms, as he ceases his ther­agen med­ic­a­tion, so that he can talk to the tele­path­ic pres­ence at Pi-Latka, and maybe the Kin­shaya. He uses this time for an in-depth study of Iconi­an archi­tec­ture, in the hope that he can gain an insight into the likely arrival site before they find it.

Selvek begins work on a way to emu­late the Tilikaal net­work sig­nal, and Quinn tries to plot a cov­ert route into the sys­tem using the nav­ig­a­tion­al data they accu­mu­lated on their first vis­it, but there are too many mov­ing bod­ies for him to sim­u­late accurately.

Quinn takes the Trave out for shake­down tests, and the cloak­ing device appears to be work­ing per­fectly, so Kon­in gives the go-ahead. He puts togeth­er a small away team, con­sist­ing of Azon­an, Quinn, Raynor, Con­ners, T’Rhyn and him­self, leav­ing Lex­ing­ton under the com­mand of Lieu­ten­ant Com­mand­er X’ll’t’k, the inter­im sci­ence officer.

The Trave heads back towards Pi-Latka, cloak­ing on the way. As they arrive, their sensors show two Kin­shaya ships with­in the sys­tem, appar­ently main­tain­ing a peri­met­er patrol. The run­about heads towards the nearest plan­et­oid, then the cloak­ing device fails.

With­in moments, the two Kin­shaya ves­sels are clos­ing with them at max­im­um speed.

The Arc: The Lex­ing­ton crew returns to Pi-Latka.

Obser­va­tions: Kon­in has used ther­agen to sup­press his tele­path­ic tal­ents on sev­er­al occa­sions, and is famil­i­ar with its with­draw­al symp­toms. He has found that isol­at­ing him­self in his cab­in assists in deal­ing with the effects.

The cloak­ing device seems to be based on an older Romu­lan design, but with dec­ades of devel­op­ment by Fed­er­a­tion sci­ent­ists. It would be nowhere near cap­able of cloak­ing Lex­ing­ton, but is very effect­ive for a ves­sel the size of a Danube-class run­about. The con­trols are phys­ic­ally isol­ated from the rest of the ship, but can be con­trolled by an appro­pri­ate com­badge signal.

Lieu­ten­ant Com­mand­er X’ll’t’k is in charge of Lex­ing­ton’s sci­ence depart­ment in the absence of Zepht, and also serves as third officer, com­mand­ing the gamma shift. He is a Xindi insect­oid; while the Xindi have been part of the Fed­er­a­tion for half-a-cen­tury, some people have dif­fi­culty trust­ing them after their actions in the 22^nd century.

Ref­er­ences: The Ouse was the ves­sel oper­ated by the Sec­tion 31 kid­nap­per of Recana-el, cap­tured in “Time Machine”.

Ques­tions: What happened to the cloak?